I enjoy making fun of Michael J. Fox. I absolutely love it. I call him “shakes.” Sometimes, if I’m feeling particularly verbose, I’ll call him “Shaky McShakerton.”

Now don’t start writing your letter to the editor just yet. Hear me out.

When I was a kid I was obsessed with the “Back to The Future” trilogy. OK, OK, I’m still obsessed with it. I also was obsessed with Michael J. Fox. I would constantly watch episodes of Family Ties and movies such as Teen Wolf and The Secret of My Success. He was, hands down, my favorite actor.

As a huge fan of Fox, I was shocked when he revealed in 1998 that he was living with Parkinson’s disease and had been for seven years.

I don’t know who it was that said “laughter is the best medicine,” but I know I want that person as my doctor during my next prostate exam. I don’t think there’s any other phrase in the English language that better sums up my philosophy on things. Except, perhaps, “Livin’ la vida loca.”

When life got stressful, I always tried to find something to laugh about. When a friend of mine was depressed, I’d try to do something stupid to make her feel better. I really believe laughter can help people cope.

Following the attacks on Sept. 11, I really wasn’t sure how people could be funny anymore. Then The Onion published its Sept. 26 edition and showed me that there were plenty of things at which to laugh.

I guess that’s how I see the tragedy of Michael J. Fox. Every time I see him on Charlie Rose or some other TV show talking about Parkinson’s Disease and I notice he can’t sit still, I want to cry. Honestly, I really feel like crying. My way of dealing with that is to laugh at it. And I’m not the only one. I recently saw Fox making fun of himself on David Letterman’s Late Show.

And I really think humor is a healthy way to deal with illness and death. It’s not that I’m insensitive to people with diseases or that I get some kind of sick thrill out of offending people — part of it is that I know Michael J. Fox will never hear what I say. And if I were to meet him, I’d congratulate him for his courage, his tenacity and his outspokenness about stem cell research.

But for me, sitting with my roommates in my apartment, I’m going to say things like that so I can come to grips with how horrible things can get in life.

And Jackson isn’t my only victim. I also make fun of my father. My dad is a diabetic who has been blind for the past 10 years or so. I constantly make off-color remarks about his lack of vision. It’s my way of handling it, and he’s cool with it. He knows he’s blind.

Laughing at tragedy is my way of dealing with it. For others, it may be crying about it, screaming about it, going out and making a difference or writing about it in banal poetic verse.

And remember that it’s going to take time. Unfortunately, unlike Michael J. Fox in “Back to the Future,” we don’t have all the time in the world: We don’t have a time machine.

Dave Wiemer is a Weinberg senior. He can be reached at [email protected].